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...And Her Response to Therapists Who Think It's Too Structured and Restrictive

By Judith Beck - In the following interview with CBT pioneer Judith Beck, she explains the basics of the cognitive therapy approach to depression, including its step-by-step process, why homework is so important, and how good CBT therapists confront the possibility of relapse from the very first session.

Buddhist Thought Pioneer Mark Epstein Has a Message for Therapists

By Ryan Howes - For psychiatrist and bestselling author Mark Epstein, a state of mindfulness isn’t just a prescription for quieting an anxious mind: it’s an introductory phase to a much deeper process of healing and enlightenment. In the following interview, he breaks down the intersection of Eastern and Western thought playing out in our culture today.

A Five-Step Process for Mastering Dieting Skills

Judith Beck - Why is it so hard to stick to a healthy eating plan and a reasonable exercise regimen? From the viewpoint of cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), when it comes to changing behavior, especially long-term, habitual patterns, getting yourself to do something different, even when you know it's good for you, depends largely on what you tell yourself: that is, on your thinking.

Did "the World's Most Ambitious Effort" to Expand Treatment Fall Flat?

By Chris Lyford - England's Improving Access to Psychological Therapies (IAPT) initiative provides mental health care to more than 900,000 people annually, and employs more than 6,000 therapists. But can psychotherapy really be systematized on a nationwide scale?

What to Do When Your Client Doesn't Want to Change

By David Burns - What if a client's resistance to change reveals something positive, beautiful, and even healthy about them—something that we’ve overlooked? If we can learn to put unconscious resistance front and center in our clinical work, we can lessen or even eliminate our clients’ resistance altogether.

Richard Schwartz Shares What Wise Buddhists Have Known for Centuries

By Richard Schwartz - We normally think of the attachment process as happening between caretakers and young children, but the more you explore how the inner world functions, the more you find that it parallels external relationships, and that we have an inner capacity to extend mindful caretaking to aspects of ourselves that are frozen in time and excluded from our normal consciousness.

Judith Beck Explains Why CBT Isn't as Manualized as You Might Think

By Mary Sykes Wylie and Judith Beck - Today, cognitive behavioral therapy is among the most widely practiced and promulgated approach in the world. But for all its mantle of scientific rigor and official approval, many therapists find CBT's "lab therapy" hard to love, if not downright dislikable. In the following interview, renowned CBT clinician Judith Beck explains how the method works, and why it's gotten a bum rap.

Are Specialization and Clinical Complexity Really Necessary?

By Jay Efran and Rob Fauber - Over psychotherapy’s history, the search for new therapy techniques and fancier gimmicks has led the field lurching down one blind alley after another. But therapy is undeniably a form of conversation, not a medical treatment. It can never be fully scripted or manualized, and its value hinges on a few basic principles that have been known for a long time.

Treating Anxiety and Depression as Chronic Conditions

By Margaret Wehrenberg - I’ve begun to put aside my idealized view that unless people overcome their difficulties once and for all, therapy is somehow a failure. More and more, that perspective seems simplistic and disconnected from the realities of what psychotherapy can actually provide. In fact, evidence continues to accumulate that many people who have anxiety and depression suffer bouts of it all their lives, even after a good response to therapy.

Helping Clients Move from Acceptance to Transformation

By Richard Schwartz - Many therapeutic attempts to integrate mindfulness help clients notice negative emotions from a place of separation and extend acceptance toward them. But what if it were possible to transform this inner drama, rather than just keep it at arm’s length? The goal of Internal Family Systems (IFS) is to build on this important first step of separating from and accepting these impulses, and then take a second step of helping clients transform them.